The Lens Analysis: Seeing through a New Perspective
Lens Text Readings
The Golden Rule (Freud, PDF)
On Self-Reliance (Emerson, PDF)
Target Text Story
Jon” by George Saunders (MSS 341)
Assignment
Select one lens text (either “The Golden Rule” or “On Self-Reliance”) to pair with Jon. In a thesis-driven essay, answer the following driving question: How do key ideas from the lens text clarify, enhance, or augment the story? The best papers will move beyond the lens analysis to explain the benefits and/or limitations of reading the story through a new perspective.
Expectations
Students are expected to construct a specific, complex and relevant thesis in response to the driving question, which is developed and sustained throughout the body paragraphs. The pattern of organization must reflect the objectives of a lens analysis, which uses one text to see / understand another. Students must integrate a minimum of 3 quotes from the nonfiction lens text and apply these ideas to minimum of 2-3 scenes from the story. Essays should be between 5-7 pages. All drafts and final papers must follow MLA rules.
Purpose
To engage in critical reading, thinking and writing activities in hopes of generating content worthy of an academic essay. The goals for essay #3 can be divided into the following skill sets:
Comprehension and Analysis: The first component requires students to demonstrate a thorough understanding of a non-fiction lens text. Here, the critical work consists of breaking an authors assertions down to their key terms, defining and analyzing both denotative and connotative meanings to produce deeper insights. Students work to set aside their own beliefs and assumptions to objectively understand the ideas of another.
Application: The second component asks students to apply concepts from the lens text to particular scenes from a story in order to enhance, to explain, to illuminate them. Students continue to set aside their personal ideologies in order to see the story from an outside perspective.
Synthesis and evaluation: The final component requires students to integrate ideas from the non-fiction essay with the story to create original insights and deeper knowledge. The application analysis allows students to make meaning as they intersect two texts and, more importantly, to practice communicating these new ideas in written form. At this stage, students are free to express how their own perspective is limited or enhanced by the application process. Keep in mind, an essay worth writing and worth reading is the product of a mind at workengaging, discovering, creating.
Grading Criteria
Language & Readability: In addition to meticulous copy-editing, the writer gives careful consideration to appropriate punctuation, precise, apt, vivid word choice, and a variation of sentence structures.
Organization: The writer produces a clear, discernible pattern of organization, paragraphs are logically sequenced and unified around specific topics related to the thesis, and the transitions are artful and effective.
Analysis: The writer demonstrates an insightful understanding of the source text as well as sound, relevant applications, which reveal how the assertions help us to better understand the story. Throughout the paper, the writer accurately represents the source text and the story as s/he maintains striking control over sustained argumentation. The analysis moves beyond repetition and summary to create new knowledge and insights.
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